ArtCloth is an emerging art form. Over recent years I have noticed contemporary fabrics are undergoing a metamorphosis into fabrics of fine art. This inaugural international exhibition is a snap shot of the current international Art Cloth movement.
It is seventy-seven years since the Bauhaus closed its doors. Spreading across a number of continents, its proponents were inculcated with a design theory (and with the subsequent style sheets) that revolutionized industrial textile designs.
Recently, I wanted to expose contemporary fine art cloths, since it is resurfacing and gaining significant momentum in North America, Europe, England, Asia, New Zealand and Australia. This inaugural international Art Cloth exhibition was purposely built to expose this momentum to Australian art practitioners, academics, critics and to the public at large.
In putting together an “Art Cloth” exhibition my challenge for each of the “selected” artists was simple: to create a new Art Cloth work (or send a completed work) consistent with the theme - Art Cloth: Engaging New Visions. Furthermore, to add a coherency to the exhibition presentation, each artist was asked to provide an Art Cloth piece approximately one meter wide and three meters in length. Techniques were suggested, but not demanded.
Selecting the artists was far more problematic. There are numerous artists whose qualifications in producing fine art cloths demand that they should be selected. For this exhibition those invited needed to be representative of a much larger cohort that could not be materially present. Moreover, the work needed to span continents!
From the USA we invited Laura Beehler, Regina Benson, Jane Dunnewold, Jeanne Raffer Beck, Joan Schulze, and Joan Truckenbrod. From Europe we invited Claire Benn (England), Claudia Helmer (Germany), Cas Holmes (England), Jurate Petruskeviciene (Lithuania), Norma Starszakowna (Scotland), Jurate Urbiene (Lithuania) and Els van Baarle (The Netherlands). From Asia Ken Kagajo (Japan) was invited and from Australia the Gallery gave invitations to Susan Fell-McLean, Helen Lancaster, Julie Ryder, Tjariya (Nungalka) Stanley (Ernabella Arts), Tjunkaya Tapaya (Ernabella Arts), Annie Trevillian and myself.
Twenty-one artworks were exhibited. The exhibition showcase’s artworks that explore innovative print, mixed media and stitch techniques.
The exhibited works are as diverse as their makers, ranging from digital technology, dye sublimation, snow and hydrosulfite discharge, glazes and patinations, deconstructed screen printing, photography, itajime and mokume shibori, paper and cloth lamination, found materials, natural dyes, batik, piecing and stitching.
There is a coherent art movement that springs from the sub-consciousness of the aboriginal artists from Ernabella Arts. Tjariya (Nungalka) Stanley’s and Tjunkaya Tapaya’s silk batik artworks, Untitled, emanate from their mythological and practical associations with the Australian landscape. The continuity of over 60,000 years of a “presence” yields a natural coherency that cannot be divorced from their artistic existence.
Deconstructed artworks of cultural, emotional and psychological frameworks play an important role in this exhibition. This grouping embraces the following artists.
Norma Starszakowna’s Razing/Raising Walls, Warsaw was inspired by tracing her father’s footsteps and so, visiting the Warsaw Ghetto, where the physical walls were in reality psychological walls of segregation. Els van Baarle’s Nothing Is The Same I & II is inspired by antiquity and ancient times, the layers reveal a strong connection to bygone peoples and cultures. Jeanne Raffer Beck’s Etruscan Relics deconstructs the linear structure of text and incorporates invented letterforms that become their own visual language. Laura Beehler’s Under Pressure probes how Art Cloth makes demands of waiting, of patience, and of time, correlating the process to the formation of precious metal. Claire Benn’s Breathe Deeply is an artistic probe to breathe deeply and find a space of stillness. Cas Holmes’ Black Birds I & II examines the ambiguity of external references combined with personal experiences within a broader cultural context of land and people. Claudia Helmer’s Die Gedanken Sind Frei 3 & 4 explores the concept that no constraints will diminish your freedom to think.
Digital explorations are fast becoming a tour de force in constructing fine art fabrics. This tool may evoke vastly different marks of art and reactions. Nevertheless, these artworks have a coherency that reflects its use. In this group are the following artists. Joan Truckenbrod’s Emerge explores the intersection between the underlying scientific processes and personal interpretations of these natural manifestations. Joan Schulze’s Catch the Light I and 2 focuses on the way light shifts and changes the appearance of ordinary things and places. You all should note that Joan Schulze is a famous American art quilter who has moved in the Art Cloth arena. Jane Dunnewold’s Sacred Planet I: The Myth of Human Superiority was inspired by reflections from the glass cases in the Perth Museum that lent an eerie quality, as if the inhabitants of the cases vanished into thin air. Annie Trevillian’s Treescape is a combination of drawings and screen prints on card and a digital print with reactive dyes on textiles.
The appearances of some works demonstrate a coherency in terms of composition and similarity in the underlying design sheets. Susan Fell McLean’s A Shroud of Ancient Echoes 1 & II celebrates an echo, an improvisation, a new melody based on old know-how that is intrinsic to Itajami Shibori. The shroud - of natural wool fibre - plays a role in the perpetual renewing cycle of life and death, as if time is a continuum. Julie Ryder’s Visionary explores the way we view objects and the way memory stores them for later recollection. In her second piece, Eclipse, Julie parallels the scientific processes used in creating her unique fruit fermentation technique to the formations and phases of the solar eclipse. Jurate Urbiene’s Quite Alone Oasis… focuses on her feelings for and about Australia with respect to its exotic character of nature, light, harmony, and self-invited fires.
In another grouping there are three works that are underpinned by pleating and folding styles. Regina Benson’s piece lo Rising II explores how natural forms express their, singularity while repeating familiar patterns. Ken Kagajo’s Discharge-thundercloud expresses his emotions as well as traces his movement of spreading paste with the squeegee, fully reflecting improvisation. Jurate Petruskeviciene’s Autumn Visions I & II employs natural dyes and mokume shibori to create an impression of vibrance and the shifts in colour that reflect the continuum of time and seasons.
Subject matter also underpins a unifying narration. As a conceptual environmentalist, Helen Lancaster’s Cane Toad Narrative is a narrative art piece that depicts the life cycle of the poisonous, introduced species, the cane toad, and its devastating effects on native species and ecological communities in this country. My own dye sublimation work, Sequestration of CO2, reminds us that plants are the natural sinks that capture carbon as well as capturing us visually.
I have often referred to contemporary fine art fabrics as “evidence” that a new continent in art is being explored. This exhibition - Art Cloth: Engaging New Visions – clearly demonstrates that there are a number of different and emerging landscapes that are being detailed within this continent of art. Exploring uncharted terrain, these artists have developed a rich visual vocabulary that challenges and transforms our perceptions of art and furthermore, recalibrates the use of cloth as a fine art medium. I wish to put it to you - watch this space - as there is now growing evidence that a coalescing is taking place, which in the not-too-distant future, will infuse into our artistic sub-consciousness, new and consistent theories (with subsequent embedded styles sheets) that will drive tomorrows fine art movements in fabric.
Exhibition Photographs courtesy Karen Tyler RedCliffe City Art Gallery. Photography by Al Sim.
